


together we fall

by ruthlesslistener



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), 終わりのセラフ | Owari no Seraph | Seraph of the End
Genre: Alternate Reality, Background mitsunoa, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cannibalism/talk of Cannibalism, Church-inspired Genocide, Comic slug god custody battle, Conditional immortality, Deus vult infidels, Don't worry about the major character death tag you'd be begging for the dude to die anyways, Explanatory prologue included, Great One Mahiru, Horror, Human Experimentation, Infanticide, Insanity, Lovecraftian Horror, Mika is a Cainhurst noble and beloved by the Vileblood Queen, No prior knowledge of Bloodborne needed, Oh joy, Other, POV Multiple, Platonic Soulmates, Queerplatonic Mikayuu, Queerplatonic Relationships, They become hunting partners, Unethical Experimentation, Yuu is a Church Hunter/Past Experiment, Yuu is a dumbass, Yuu tries to fuck or befriend all the Great Ones in sight, mika is tired
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 23:35:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16147913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruthlesslistener/pseuds/ruthlesslistener
Summary: The moon is rising over the city of Yharnam, and with it comes the Hunt, a time where the line between beasthood and humanity is blurred. Yuu, a failed experiment of the Healing Church, wants nothing more than to bring honor to the establishment that he believes saved his life- but the so-called evil he's been paired with, Lord Mikaela of the Vilebloods, is vehemently against it. And as the blood moon rises high over the streets, and more and more lives are lost to the call of the Nightmare, he's beginning to see just what his partner means when he calls the hunters- and the institution they serve- the real monsters.(No prior knowledge of Bloodborne or Owari no Seraph required.)





	1. Prologue/ Explanatory Summary

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty much everyone who knows me will know just how much I love Bloodborne lmao. And, well, after over 200 hours of playing it, and countless hours trying to puzzle out the lore, it has occurred to me that the plot of Bloodborne and Ons are...actually pretty similar, though I'd say that Bloodborne is a hundred times more brutal and, well, better-written than Ons is.
> 
> So, naturally, I had to write a crossover for it.
> 
> This is going to be a long prologue. I apologize- but if you came for the Seraph of the End content, struggle with contextual storytelling (in that you wanna know ALL the answers), and do not know the story of Bloodborne, this is required reading. I will make the best attempt possible to explain how the world works through storytelling, but this will allow you to understand some Bloodborne-exclusive stuff that I will have to include to make events comprehensive with the canon timeline. If you don't want to read all this and just want to skip right over to the story, then go right ahead! This will always be here for you if you need any help. And, of course, if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a message over discord or at my tumblr (fallenprussiansoldier).

Quick note: If you want to figure things out on your own, don't wanna read all this shit, or want to get in the mood, watch this- it’s a perfect visual summary of the game, will help you visualize things, and is overall just really cool. 

Also, this is all my interpretation of the lore, and what I'm going to be using to help me write this fic, so take all of this speculation with a grain of salt when or if you play the main game.

 

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IayKiZAarvk&index=9&list=PLjVw5A5RXVtw3pUUGLEd1wjgR88h_lJ9n ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IayKiZAarvk&index=9&list=PLjVw5A5RXVtw3pUUGLEd1wjgR88h_lJ9n)

 

The Story of Bloodborne:

 

Bloodborne is a story based heavily off of the works of H.P. Lovecraft, a Victorian horror author well known for his theory on how humanity is but a small, dumb, irrelevant speck of life in the middle of a vast, cosmic world, where god-like, ancient beings who have existed since life began shape our world with little regard for us, as we are but ants in comparison to them- but with a twist. Rather than play into Lovecraft’s strange paranoia of the unknown and include his penchant for racism, the story of Bloodborne depicts these Great Ones as sympathetic beings, setting them in a world where worshipping them is not limited to small, non-white towns (Lovecraft was obnoxiously racist and superstitiously religious, the coward), but is normal, and it is humanity’s inevitable thirst for power and greed for endless knowledge that lead to their downfall. In the case of Yharnam, this was by experimenting on people in an attempt to turn them into Great Ones, through the Healing Church, an institution that controlled the entirety of Yharnam, acted like their savior, turned a blind eye to their own cruelty, and shackled the Great Ones- much like how the JIDA in Seraph of the End does cruel experiments on people to turn them into seraphs and use them for their own power. And, also much like in ONS, they were opposed by an ancient, vampire-like group of nobility; the inhabitants of Cainhurst, usually referred to in-game by the slur ‘Vilebloods’. (In Bloodborne, all the vilebloods but their queen were brutally slaughtered by church zealots, but the point still stands.)

 

Before Yharnam, there were several civilizations that lived in a symbiotic relationship with the Great Ones- for every Great One is unique, and every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a surrogate. To counteract their infertility, miscarriages, and so on, Great Ones would select someone to either bear them a child (known as a ‘child of blood’), or to transform them into an infant Great One, through selective blood transfusions and other arcane means. In their universe, blood is essentially liquid life, containing the will and power of the individual who makes it, and the blood of Great Ones have special properties- they can heal any wound, any affliction, and, with careful dosages of special blood from a parent Great One (the key type of blood seems to be the blood from the Great One’s stillborn’s umbilical cord), transform the form itself. But each civilization that learned this became greedy to turn into these Great Ones, and each civilization fell- for imbibing the wrong kinds of blood unmonitored does not cause ascension, but instead transforms a person into a beast. Loran, a more distant land, was consumed by the beastly plague that wracked it, and devoured by the sands that surrounded it. Pthumeru, the predecessor to Yharnam, nearly managed to create a utopia before becoming greedy- but fell when their pregnant queen, Yharnam, was bound and had her infant Great One, Mergo, torn from her body (most likely for his umbilical cord). These civilizations, however, left their legacy behind in their dungeons and catacombs, and, later on, when the city of Yharnam rose and curious scholars from the college of Byrgenwerth excavated the tombs, they stumbled across the holy mediums of the ancients- either their stores of blood, or the left-behind Great One, Ebrietas, daughter of the cosmos- and all hell broke loose. 

 

The blood of the gods was brought back to the college (one type was spirited away to the Cainhurst nobility for their queen, Annalise, rendering her immortal- it’s important to note that the church later claims they stole it, but the Cainhurst nobility are heavily implied to be Pthumarian descendants, and are thus entitled to it by right of birth). Byrgenwerth became obsessed with trying to learn how to ascend, and, once the blood was discovered to have miraculous healing properties, a schism occurred between headmaster Wilhelm and a young scholar named Laurence. Laurence, convinced that the blood was the key to ascension, argued that it was their future, and that it was wrong to keep it from the public, with its miracle healing powers (note; he really only wanted to experiment with it). Wilhelm, however, remained wary, and claimed that the Old Blood would bring nothing but chaos, and that the true way to ascend was through insight into the cosmos, so that they may grow eyes on the inside of their brain and finally see the world as it truly is (eyes are a huge motif in Bloodborne, along with the blood; they represent knowledge, and it’s important to note that the Great Ones are lined with many eyes, so that they may See all, whereas the beasts are either blind or have collapsed pupils). A schism occurred then- Laurence left the college, going on to create the Healing Church, where he cured and experimented on many with the blood, leaving old Wilhelm to his studies at Byrgenwerth (another note: Laurence still remembered and respected Wilhelm, and tried to remain cautious, but more and more people forgot the longer shit went on). The Healing Church quickly became known as a source of miracles, growing substantially in power an influence, and Yharnam thrived as the source of blood healing and ministration- until the scourge of beasts finally came, and their tampering with the blood came around and bit them in the ass.

 

It all started in Old Yharnam- the poorest district, the one who relied on the river as their water source. Laurence and his officials, testing the blood’s ability to heal, poisoned the river and the people, until the town was known to be swept with a strange plague known as the ‘Ashen Blood’- and then they swept in, and began their experiments with the blood, ‘curing’ it miraculously. However, this quickly backfired, and the first people began to turn into beasts and revenge the town eating people, until one of Laurence’s friends with a very big scythe, Gherman, put his foot down and began to hunt the beasts like it was a job, efficiently clearing them out, and establishing the Hunter’s Workshop- a place where the newfound profession could take recruits, and learn how to maximize their beast-hunting efficiency. He was soon joined by Lady Maria, a Cainhurst noble and descendant of the queen with a heart too kind for the blood-drunk nobles (she’s the Mika of this world), and other hunters, and the Hunt became a thriving profession. The church happily backed it, claiming it a holy way of purging the beasts (who were, of course, quickly known to the populace as sinners paying for their transgressions rather than the innocents that they were), and soon established their own sector of hunters, the Church hunters, lead by Ludwig, first hunter of the church and Holy Blade. For a while, it worked- the church experimented on Old Yharnam and behind their gilded gates, the Hunters kept the non-turned safe and killed their failed experiments, all was well- but they did not know how to stop the plague, and their own leader, first vicar Laurence, was succumbing to his own madness, egged on by the blood and the stories of a Byrgenwerth scholar that was able to achieve ascension. So when stories of a small fishing hamlet that had been blessed by a pregnant Great One arose, he roused the hunters, and instructed them this: to slaughter all the transformed villagers, and crack open their skulls to search their brains for eyes, proof of ascension. And to Gherman, his trusted friend, he said this: to kill the mother of the sea, Kos, and to tear her unborn infant from her womb, to take back to Yharnam to study and experiment with.

 

And they did it.

 

But not without a price. Great Ones are able to warp reality, to cause pocket dimensions and dreams within dreams, and are able to cause curses when their wrath is incited. And Kos, hearing the pleas of her dying people, angered by her baby being taken from her, cursed the hunters that did it- for all of them, and all the hunters after, to be cursed to become drunk with blood, and to die and be trapped within the Hunter’s Nightmare, where they will be forever stuck in an endless, bloody hunt, caught in their own beastly madness, more monster than human.

 

Things deteriorated from there. Maria, sickened beyond words by what she saw transpire, revoked her vows as a hunter and left to become a caregiver for the church wards, hoping to make up for her sins in some way. But the suffering of her patients at the hands of the church scientists broke her, especially when their experiments failed, and she ended up committing suicide, sickened and guilty beyond belief. Her death, in turn, tore Gherman apart; he locked himself away, and became obsessed with attempting to bring her back, creating a life-sized doll replica to be her new body, and, with the help of Laurence, beckoned the nameless Moon Presence, who created the Hunter’s Dream (a safe haven for hunters, layering them in dreams so that when they die, they merely wake up in a different layer of reality) and animated the doll- at the cost of sucking Gherman into the dream to be the host and her surrogate child, where he suffered miserably for god knows how long, trapped away from his friends, stuck only with a doll who was nothing like Maria and the occasional company of passing hunters. With Gherman gone, the Workshop suffered a crippling blow of morale, and the Church, silently innovating their own weaponry to deal with the bigger monsters they were creating, soon took over. But they knew not how to stop the plague they started, and before long, Old Yharnam was consumed by beasts, their first leader, Laurence, transforming into the first of the worst monsters, the Cleric Beast- and so they called upon a particularly fire-oriented faction of the workshop, the Powder Kegs, to clean up the mess. Old Yharnam was sealed off, and burned to the ground with everyone in it, killing beast, human, and hunter alike (it’s implied that Laurence also died in the flames, as his body in the Nightmare is on fire). The Powder Kegs, horrified by what they wrought, disbanded, and the Hunter’s Dream faded into an archaic method of hunting beasts, consumed by the church’s shadow, whose hunters/experimental surgeons soon turned the title of ‘hunter’ from that of a protector to something to be feared by the people. A faction of it- the School of Mensis- split away from them and took over the hidden prison-village of Yahar’gul, where they attempted to create a replacement child for Kos through horrific experiments, and eventually sacrificed the entire village in a ritual attempt to have audience with a Great One, reviving the infant newborn child of Queen Yharnam, Mergo, and sinking the entirety of Yharnam into a nightmare as the Moon Presence reacted, and created the Blood Moon, which thinned the line between human and beast and created The Hunt, an almost endless night where she sent her children-hunters out to destroy the nightmare, and silence Mergo’s harrowing cry. But the Healing Church refused to give up on their greed and lust for power, and soon, Yharnam began to deteriorate, turning into a city of madman doctors, beasts, and blood-mad hunters.

 

...and this is a SHORT summary of what happened, with a lot of shit omitted for clarity’s sake (such as Byrgenwerth being locked off and the entire illusion shit thanks to Rom, the Vacuous Spider that prevents some Moon Presence fuckery, etc) Bloodborne’s story is really too convoluted and deep to summarize in one go, however, and much of the storytelling is visual, so hopefully all this shit will make sense in the actual fanfic (which takes place after the fall of Old Yharnam and the old hunters, but before the Cainhurst massacre, and before the Hunter’s Dream kind of faded completely into the church/obscurity).

 

But before we go on, here are some basic terms to understand. Don’t worry about memorizing them; I’ll utilize them in-story later.

 

The Choir: Highest rank of the Healing Church. They commune directly with Great Ones (or, rather, attempt to; they really only have access to one), and are the source of most of the research for ascension. Known for their blindfold caps, arcane abilities, control of the orphanage where they store people to use as offerings, and obnoxiously creepy music taste. The Hiiragi family is bound to this faction, and Mahiru was a member of the Choir before she ascended to become a Great One.

 

The Vicars: Church leaders. I honestly don’t know much about them other than they’re the Big Cheese and tend to turn into various iterations of really big, screamy, annoying, antlered beasts.

 

The White Church Hunters: The second-lowest rank of the Healing Church, and the highest rank of hunters...though it is rather a stretch to call them that, as they don’t really ‘hunt’ as they do experiments. These are the people that get bumped up into the Choir when they’ve proven creepily scientific enough, and they’re the ones doing most of the in- field experiments. According to them, they’re trying to find the ‘source of the scourge’ to stamp it out, but I...seriously doubt that. Shinoa got placed here because of her disinterest in Choir shenanigans, and was working on falling down the ranks before she got booted off to be a Hunter of the Dream.

 

The Black Church Hunters : Lowest rank of ‘official’ hunters (with the next step down being common civilians the Church employs in the hunts for fodder). They liken themselves to rudimentary doctors, seeing themselves as people who are taking out the cancerous part of the populace to save the rest, but they’re really used to clear out anyone and anything the Church doesn’t like, including people ‘suspected’ of turning into beasts. Main reason why many people both hate and fear the hunters. This is where Guren’s power resides, though he is slightly higher ranking than most due to the fact that he’s the romantic interests of not only Choir member Shinya, but Mahiru.

 

The Executioners: A subsection of the church entirely dedicated to eradicating the Vilebloods, who they consider the evil. Most likely originally used to kill off the opposition the Church faced, they’re psycho hyper-religious maniacs, though they’re also somewhat of a joke, seeing as their helmets are basically gilded traffic cones, and their ‘holy weapon’ is a bigass wagon wheel. Luckily, they commit suicide to achieve martyrdom, which helps thin them out, and cannot kill the Vileblood queen, who is the source of all Vilebloods- but unluckily, they’re on the rise in the timeline set for this fic. Oh joy. Yuu was pretty interested in them, until he met Mika, and was thus sufficiently horrified by their vehement hatred.

 

Vilebloods/Cainhurst Nobles: The last descendants of the old inhuman Pthumerian line, they’re the vampires of Bloodborne, and work similarly to how the Seraph of the End vampires work. The queen is the strongest source of their special blood, and can turn others into Vilebloods; her blood descendants are similarly affected, and those who imbibe more of her blood are prone to be more powerful. They are able to manipulate and use their blood as a weapon, through either making their bullets more powerful or making their blood poisonous, and much of their weaponry is based around this blood usage. Vilebloods close to the queen also tend to have more control over their blood and can cause more damage; Lady Maria, for example, was able to lengthen her blades and cause fiery after-arcs post stabbing herself with her weapon- and she wasn’t even using a bloodtinge-based weapon! Vilebloods are also well-known for being longterm imbibers of blood, and have a particular love of hunter blood, which has special qualities that only the Great Ones and Vilebloods are aware of; they were the original Hunter of Hunters, and were proud of it, to the point where beast hunting was seen as nothing more than a task for their lowest servants. Mika was an orphan who was captured and brought to Cainhurst by a Vileblood who preyed on hunters nearby, and was given a strong dose of Queen Krul’s blood to heal him, tying him close to her, but had Cainhurst lineage in him already, thus increasing his powers. Much like Maria, though, he hates how stifling the nobles of Cainhurst are as much as he despises the experiments of the Healing Church, and thus can find solace only in the Hunter’s Dream.

 

The Hunters of Hunters: A covenant dedicated entirely to killing hunters gone blood-mad. Donned in a plague doctor mask and a crowfeather cape, they dress like carrion crows to suggest sky burial, hoping that by killing their companions via friendly fire rather than in the heat of a hunt, they will find rest in a hunter’s dream, rather than suffer the endless hunts of the Nightmare. They are a secretive guild with secretive rites, and a true force to be reckoned with, for the Hunters of Hunters are the people who kill those who are capable of tearing the very gods from the heavens- apart from the Cainhurst hunters, they are the most efficient hunter-killers, and indeed may be a line descended from Maria’s tutoring, for their twin-bladed trick weapons, unique to the Workshop, are similar in nature to the twin-bladed Rakuyo, and they share similar fight styles and morals as the Lady herself did. Of all the options offered, this is the one that Shinoa finds herself the most interested in; she has lost too many loved ones to madness to not know how heavy the burden of the blood-cursed is. 

 

The Hunters of the Dream/Moon-Scented Hunters/Hunters of the Moon: The ‘direct line’ of hunters, the Hunters of the Dream are what became of the original Workshop hunters after old Gherman, with the help of Laurence, beckoned the nameless Moon Presence, a Great One who took him and his hunters as her adoptive children, to be emboldened by the echoing will of the blood they imbibe during the hunt, and to find rest in the Hunter’s Dream, a nightmare version of the Workshop that she created. These hunters, tied to the dream, are the closest that one can come to ascend, for intentionally or not, the Plain Doll that the Moon Presence animated to ease Gherman’s suffering can take the place of a nurturing Great One, and allow a person to become stronger and inhuman without fear of turning into a beast (...for the most part). In the same line, they are perhaps the most inhuman of the hunters; Yharnam is a place of pocket dimensions, a series of nightmares layered over each other (which allows all hunters to survive fatal blows, for to die in a nightmare is to awaken in the waking world), but it is the hunters of the dream alone that can navigate through these nightmares, and who are tied directly back to the safe haven that a Great One created for them. These hunters are usually created via a special blood transfusion- most likely the Moon Presence blood, which then allows them access to the Hunter’s Dream, and marks them with a particular scent that has been described as ‘moonlit’. Even though they have faded into obscurity since Gherman got sucked into the Dream and Laurence turned into a flaming wendigo, they still have a relatively fair amount of influence and respect (if only because their hunters are stubborn as FUCK, knowing they can’t technically die until they are severed from the Dream), and are really the only faction that can handle a wide range of diverse people, for their saw-toothed weapons, brutal as they are, are the most effective against beasts, and they were mostly made up of ragtag groups of people, anyways. With Yuu’s suicidal boldness and protectiveness, a well as his overwhelming compassion, this is really the only place that he can be truly welcomed. For though the waking world is cruel, and humanity too steeped in ambition to do anything but discard him, the Great Ones are sympathetic in spirit, and are more than willing to give him a helping hand- provided that he doesn’t succumb to their curse and go blood-mad, of course, or find the stash of forbidden beast blood pellets that the Workshop can get around the church ban for. That would be bad.

 

The League:  A subsection of the Hunters of the Dream that is focused on teamwork and eradicating vermin, the physical representation of the root of mankind’s evil, which they can see with the help of a Great One’s inhuman utterings. Their leader is a batshit crazy guy whose sign of office is a bucket-helmet with a single eyehole punched out (and also got so mad at a werewolf that killed his friends once that he vored it), but hey, at least he’s kind of friendly. Yoichi and Kimizuki got picked up by League Hunters as orphans on the outskirts of Yharnam, and are going to the Workshop hoping to be indoctrinated into the dream to help their fellows out. (And maybe also get some revenge while they’re at it. Jolly good fellows, really.) [NOTE: The official title for a member of the League is ‘Confederate’, but as this is set in apocalyptic steampunk/Lovecraftian Victorian England, the Civil War connotations one may have for this word do not apply.]

 

Kin of the Cosmos: Cousins, or lesser versions of Great Ones. Similar to how a wyvern is a cousin of a dragon, but does not possess the qualities to truly be considered one, the Kin are celestial beings that are somewhat capable of manipulating the heavens and seeing the eldritch truth. Not many roam loose in Yharnam, but prefer to stay by the sides of the Great Ones in their nightmares, for the watery, starlit caves the Great Ones favor are also the natural habitats of the Kin- though Upper Cathedral ward, where the Choir and the orphanage rests, are chock-full of them, due to the fact that Kin are the closest that the church doctors have gotten to make a Great One, and that two Great Ones (Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos and Formless Oedon) rest in close proximity to the Upper Cathedral ward, with Ebrietas making her dimension home right next to it.

 

The Great Ones: Beings as old as the cosmos, the first of the primordial life that rose from the seas. Great Ones are beings that see all and know all, creatures that can reshape the fabric of reality into what they wish, create the pocket dimensions that the people of Yharnam call ‘nightmares’. Each Great One is unique, and, as such, each Great One has lost a child in some way (for breeding is hard when each member of your species are not the same- when a Great One _ does _ manage to have a child, they usually have a , birth a stillborn, or have their child torn from them by those greedy to become them), and yearns for a surrogate. As such, the Great Ones are usually possessive over the humans they call their own, and are sympathetic to their plights, often answering when called upon. Unfortunately, the feebleness of the human brain oftentimes cannot handle the magnitude of a Great One’s mind, and, as thus, are usually either driven mad, or require alterations to be able to hear their voices (which are said to sound like running water, and are transcribed as runes, which can aid hunters in manipulating their abilities in the nightmare). This is where Byrgenwerth and, later on, the Healing Church first got the idea for human experimentation/alteration to ‘ascend humanity into its next evolution’ (though this soon turned to the more ambitious route of becoming actual Great Ones). Great Ones are also territorial in nature,  _ especially _ when it comes to their adoptive children, and are capable of laying curses upon those who harm them or the people that they watch over. (For example, the hunters of the church and the workshop slaughtered the inhabitants of a village that a pregnant Great One, Kos, was watching over, and then killed her and stole her child from her womb to be studied and experimented on. In retaliation to this, she created the Hunter’s Nightmare, a hell of sorts for hunters and church doctors alike, and cursed all hunters to turn blood-mad and then die and be sent to said nightmare, where they are cursed to endure the horrors of an endless hunt.) To be a host of a nightmare is to be favored, but it is also harrowing on one’s sanity- a host can be dead in the waking world, but alive in the nightmare, for example, and such close proximity to the mind of the Great One inhabiting it usually drives one mad. For the most part, the Great Ones are non confrontational- much of their damage comes from being unable to fathom how small, frail, and squishy humans are rather than actual malice- but, seeing as the Hunters of the Dream not only wronged some of their kin, but are the adoptive children of one of the two powerful gods of blood in Yharnam (the Moon Presence, contrasting against Formless Oedon), some may attempt to snatch a passing hunter and void it out of existence, which has lead to much panic among the hunters who do not enough insight to see them and much hilarity to the hunters who do.

 

Insight: Knowledge of the eldritch truth, allowing one to see the world as it truly is (and perhaps go a little bit mad). Certain things can only be seen if a person has enough Insight for their minds to comprehend them, such as the arcane knowledge that many of the church use to warp the world to their purpose, the life that the Plain Doll possessed, and the Amygdala Great Ones that like to hang off many buildings in Yharnam to observe the going-ons below. Guren, Shinya, and Shinoa have the insight to see them, but choose not to say anything about it, so as to spare the rest of the hunters/people the occasional fits of madness that plague them; Yuu can from the experiments, but has not yet figured out why others can’t, and is somewhat paranoid about it. Mika, having once been part of the orphanage and experimented on before a Cainhurst hunter slaughtered his guard and stole him, can also see them, but the blood that they used to try to alter him wiped his memories as to how he learned their existence, and thus just thinks that’s normal.

 


	2. Welcome to Yharnam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shrouded by night, but with a steady stride  
> Coloured by blood, but always clear of mind  
> Proud hunter of the church.  
> -Yamamura the Wanderer, hunter of the League

_Fear the old blood._

“But I don’t _want_ to be a hunter of the Dream!”

The shrillness of a teenage voice was quite different from the soft, burbling songs he was used to hearing inside his mind. Guren winced at the dissonance that echoed through him- to hear a voice from the outside rather than the inside- and rubbed his temples to try to shush it away, glaring irritably at the person beside him, the source of most of his non-otherworldly troubles.

Across the table, Yuuichirou glared back, twisting the orphan’s tag that hung from his neck between his fingers. He was far from the little scrap of the thing he’d found shivering on the streets after the last blood-moon hunt, and he’d grown up fierce, with a vigor that all the mystery serums the Choir had pumped into him could not break- a vigor, that was, unfortunately, still quite human. That would never do. Transforming people into Great Ones (or, at the very least, Kin of the Cosmos) was the ultimate goal of the Healing Church; it had been quite disheartening to have lead Yuu back to his quarters transfusion after transfusion with no more change in him than some dizziness or muscle weakness. The church had seen enough failures already.

Hence the reason for their little…’”talk”. There was no use for an experiment that would not respond, after all. Yuu’s failure to ascend was beyond his comprehension, but Guren was still a hunter of the church, and no church hunter worth their salt would be so ignorant to not know- or, at the very least, _suspect_ \- what their organization was trying to achieve.

What they _nearly_ managed to do. What they came so close to learning, before She ran away with all they had gathered, and left them all behind.

“And I have told you, brat, that I have no choice.” Guren slammed his glass down with a little more force than needed, regretting it as soon as the pungent amber liquid within slopped over the edges. Liquor was hard to come by in Yharnam, for the blood the church passed out was far more intoxicating than simple alcohol, and not many merchants stopped by anymore, fearing the beastly curse that plagued the town. Guren could hardly blame them. “We cannot continue our research, and we’ve got too many hunters out protecting the populace to bother with taking in a child who can hardly swing a weapon. What do you want us to do, sit you up by the orphanage and hope that some Great One takes pity on us and spirits you away?” His lip curled at the memories of that wretched place; he could remember the elaborate archways of the orphanage all too clearly, with the pale watchmen guarding it and the sluglike, failed experiments crawling around blindly, squeaking out for an absent mother to guide them. He detested the thought of sending Yuu up there; to rot away as the soft songs of the Kin beside him drove him mad, waiting for a Great One that would never listen. “It has already become apparent. The gods do not want you, and we don’t want you either.”

Yuu recoiled, clearly hurt; Guren could see the way he clenched his teeth, the way his hand closed hard over his tag, and grief washed over him again, grief mingled with regret. But he had long grown used to it by now, and so he hardly reacted when Yuu, voice rough with a mixture of anger and wary submission, murmured: “I know how to wield a sword. One of the white doctors showed me when they were working, so I could protect myself if one of the other patients lashed out. And if not, I could be a blood saint. I’ve been told that I could be perfect for it.” Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away from his neck, anxiously rapping his knuckles against the wood of the table instead. “I won’t be a burden, I promise. Please, Guren.” He lifted his head, guileless green eyes catching his guardian’s, and for a split second, Guren felt a hunger he had thought he’d bypassed grip him- the thirst to reach down into the depths of that sweet innocence and pluck it out, bit by bit, until there was nothing left. A predatory urge, one he thought he’d left behind after his first hunt, when he’d taken that special blood and had heard the song of the moon calling to him. A song he had quickly grown to detest, once his beloved had ascended and had proved herself all the more alluring. “I want to be useful. I want to help. Please, don’t send me away.”

The ‘please’ was somewhat forced- Yuu was not known for being polite- but the neediness in his tone was not. And Guren understood it all too well, as it was the same kind of need that had driven him back into the Healing Church’s shadow once his own parents had died, the cloak of his dead father draped loosely over his thin frame as he begged them for mercy. They’d taken him in, replaced the reeking tatters with the pristine black garb of a lower church hunter, and they’d given him a home, a life. He was indebted to them, so much so that when the time came that he’d walked in on his superiors holding down a delirious patient, drinking her sweet human blood like animals, all he did was ask if they wanted him to close the door. The corruption didn’t bother him, the madness didn’t bother him, the way they held all of Yharnam in their fist (like a butcher’s hand around the neck of a goose, ready to kill and devour, and wasn’t what they were, really? Butchers, executioners, _monsters_ ) didn’t phase him. He walked past doors where children screamed and patients sang to their helpless gods in choked, broken wails, and still he held their holy blades, still he prayed at their alters and killed whoever they saw fit to damn- all for the good of the people, after all. All for their safety. For what was his purpose, after all, but to stop the spread of the scourge, and to lead humanity into its next stage of evolution? Killing those suspected of turning was the least he could do- the least he could do in exchange for life.

Then they had gave him two lovers, two people who hid their disdain for their makers behind their smiles and their holy masks, and only then did he start to consider that what he was doing was wrong- that maybe, just maybe, the church was not the benevolent protector that it seemed, and that it was just as damned as the rest of Yharnam, festering with beasts who lurked in the mind rather than the body. But by then it was too late, and the night of the full hunt had come and She ascended, and now he was too ensnared in the clutches of Her dream to even think of escaping.

His lover. His beautiful infant goddess, whose voice thrummed in his head like rain on a rooftop, who bent and warped his dreams to Her purpose, cutting Her teeth on the very shape of their reality itself. Ready to consume, devour, and create, to form universes within universes, to bend time and life to Her will.  From what Shinya told him behind a very bitter smile, this was proof that She had become a Great One, that She had truly ascended, and was now trying to claim territory of Her own somewhere out in the cosmos. That he was chosen by Her, special in some way- and that it was through that alone that he was granted access to the whisperings of the higher-ups, that he alone of the black church hunters was allowed access to the upper half of the cathedral, where the Choir and the kin of the cosmos roamed. Some people thought that Shinya envied him- for how scalding must it be, to not only be one of the Choir, but to have your very own fiance choose you for another? It was lucky that the knowledge of ascension was technically classified knowledge, or else the entirety of Yharnam would be whispering about the indignity of it all.

Somehow, however, Guren didn’t think that the venom in Shinya’s voice had anything to do with jealousy. The Choir were mysterious, yes, but they were still human, and, as with most people, you tend to learn one’s tells after fucking them. And Guren had spent a hell of a lot of time fucking him.

But now was not the time to let his mind wander, he reminded himself. Now was the time to get Yuu to shut the fuck up.

“The choice has already been decided; none of your whining can fix it now. The old workshop is a long-esteemed partner of the Healing Church, and they need hunters more than we do, so we’re sending you over with a couple other candidates as a symbol of goodwill. Be glad that they are willing to take you in at all.” Yuu gave him a fierce scowl; Guren picked up his glass of alcohol and chugged it, both to quell his weary thoughts and show the kid just how little fucks he gave for his plight. “It’s something that whoever the fuck runs the place now decided on doing; some kind of way of tying the branches of the hunters together. The plague has been getting more persistent, after all, and now that the last of those blast-happy Powder Kegs have disbanded, the Workshop is in need of some fresh blood.” He gave Yuu a quick glance out of the corner of his eye, but the humour he tried to slip into his words didn’t make him laugh, like usual. The sullen cast to his face proved that he was too busy sulking to pick out any subtle jokes. Damn. “Oh, stop it. It’s not that bad. Our esteemed founder, Laurence, was quite a dear friend of the first hunter, and it was the Workshop hunters who taught us how to hold our own against the beasts. Were it not for them, the Healing Church would be nothing.” He absently spun his drink and squinted thoughtfully somewhere over his head; there was more to the story, something slipping in his mind, but he was starting to get buzzed, and whatever he missed didn’t feel particularly urgent. “‘Sides. It’s not like you’re totally cut off from the church. You’re technically a representative, even if you won’t be one of us.”

That seemed to ease Yuu’s irritation a bit; the boy’s brow softened, and he looked at Guren not with anger, but with something else. Something unfathomable. Something that was probably still unhappiness but to a lesser degree, gods, was he supposed to know everything about the kid?! All he did was make sure that he survived his experiments, that he took blood afterwards, that he ate and drank and shit when he needed to. That was all he needed to do. That was enough; he was a hunter of the church, not a damn babysitter.

“I still don’t want to do it...but if I get to kill the beasts, stop the scourge, then...maybe. Sure. I’ll be a hunter of the dream.” Yuu looked down at the table, absently tracing a finger over it; Guren wondered, absently, if the boy was inscribing runes that no one else knew yet, whisperings of the gods so unfathomable that he could not draw upon them unless his mind was elsewhere. In many ways, Yuu was a normal teenage boy; brash, quick to flare into a rage, bold in the way that only the naive possessed- but normal teenage boys didn’t have the blood of ancient Great Ones pumped into their veins. Not without growing mad, distorted, withering away until they were no longer human, but something _else_ , the will of the gods in the blood they had taken shaping them without form. When he’d grabbed him off the streets, he hadn’t thought twice about what he was doing; he had seen a child, crying for his parents, huddling over the bloodstained wreak of two bodies that a Hunter must have mauled in the night. A typical casualty; the common folk rarely had the will to resist the bloodlust, and paid the price. He’d merely shook the blade of his holy sword clean, beheaded the matted scourge beast creeping up behind the oblivious kid, and took him to the Cathedral. Standard procedure. He hadn’t even paused to consider what would happen to him afterwards; he’d just assume the regular. That the white hunters and the blood ministers would weave a tale of false sympathy for the child, and carry him up to the orphanage, just another little body to play with- provided that the Great Ones didn’t decide that he was the right surrogate for them.

He hadn’t expected Yuuichirou to be as resilient as he was- or as incessant about tagging along beside him, talking of wanting to be a hunter, to kill the beasts that threatened the people who saved him. He hadn’t expected to open his eyes after a long night of the hunt, aching from the inside out, to see Yuuichirou kneeling solemnly beside his bedside table, very much sane and very much human.

...To an extent. There was still something wrong with him, something sharp and wolf-like, something _other_. His eyes looked like seawater in the moonlight; sometimes, when he was sleeping, Guren could hear him murmuring, laughing and sobbing in a tongue that barely sounded like English. When he bled, his blood didn’t smell human, and he healed with a grace that Guren had only seen in the accursed knights of Cainhurst, who pierced themselves through with their blades and used their poisoned blood to slaughter man and beast alike. He’d only seen such things in the hunters of the Dream; hunters who smelled like the moon, hunters who would squabble over territory like animals, and, in the same breath, inscribe the words of the gods on their flesh like a sacrament. People with the minds of beasts and the bodies of humans, people cradled by the gods who the citizens of Yharnam both revered and feared alike. Or course, the church hunters were not so different themselves- they were created from the dreamers, after all- but the church hunters didn’t talk of nightmares, or rend their new acolytes in half with their saw-toothed weapons to teach them their place. Being sustained by the Dream was no excuse to waste perfectly good blood.

Guren considered this, turned this over in his mind, and decided that Yuu would fit right in.

“Finally, you hear reason.” He placed his now-empty glass with a regretful grunt; his head was buzzing pleasantly, but he was nowhere near drunk enough to deal with the egnamics of the Dream. He took a quick glance at the sun, saw that sundown was not yet upon them, and buckled his gun to his belt with a yawn that neutralized whatever indignant yapping was coming out of his ward’s mouth. “Come. We need to get you ready before the night of the hunt begins.”

* * *

As it turned out, getting ready was quite a task- Guren did not Dream anymore, not in the same sense of the word that Yuu was used to, which meant that his hunter’s clothes were no longer repaired of their tears and stains everytime he went to sleep. And so it was that he found himself standing awkwardly in his master’s room, fidgeting and being eaten alive with the racing current of his own thoughts.

 _I never wanted to dream. I wanted to hunt for the church- but what is it really, if the Workshop and the church were once intertwined?_ Yuu bit his lip, an absent old habit he had yet to grow out of. _I heard Guren say to some church folk that the hunters of the dream are a bit outdated, but that they are essential to fight alongside due to their durability and intimacy with the hunt. They aren’t holy people, and many don’t have pure noble Yharnam blood- but I don't care about that. I just want to repay the Church for saving me. Can I do that, if I’m one of the hunters who dream?_

“Yuu.” Guren’s rough voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he shot to attention, standing straight and holding out his arm for blood on reflex before he realized what he did and tucked it back, flushing in embarrassment. Guren raised one eyebrow, but said nothing about his misdemeanor, opting to shove a tangled bundle of clothes into Yuu’s face instead, ignoring his cry of protest.

“Here. I found one of my older hunter sets. I’m pretty sure it shrank in the wash; maybe it’ll fit you.” Yuu pulled the largest chunk of fabric out of the pile and shook it out; indeed, it was the all-too familiar garb of a black church hunter, albeit one worn and tattered by hunts, and one far too big for his slender, younger frame. Guren must have seen the dismay on Yuu’s face, for his next eyebrow rose, and, with the flat voice that Yuu had heard that many parents apparently used when irked, said: “You’ll get your own set once you’re indoctrinated into the Hunter’s Dream. The hunters of the moon have their own distinctive style, I’m sure you’ll get one if you prove you have the mettle for it. Or maybe not. They might not care anymore, really.” Guren shrugged, and the smirk on his face was practically shit-eating. “I stopped giving a shit about what my clothes looked like after a scourge beast nearly stripped me naked the night after I spent a day and a half stitching them back together.”

It was a funny thought, to think of Guren hunched over bloodstained cloth, stitching it together while grumbling like a disgruntled housewife. Yuu couldn’t help it; he laughed, and after a pause, Guren joined in with him, the sound of his mirth strange and wonderful against the surly silence that Yuu was so accustomed to- he hardly minded the awkward size of the black church set as he donned it, basking as he was in the light of his watcher’s laugh. And then Guren made a soft noise of remembrance, and reached back into his closet, and pulled something out that made Yuu’s brain short-circuit.

“Is that…?” He didn’t complete his sentence; he didn’t need to. There was nothing quite like the wide, bladed sheath of a Ludwig’s Holy Blade, its intricate carvings and runes decorating the surface. It was distinctively a church weapon, one of _the_ most esteemed of church weapons, for it had been the chosen blade of the first of the church hunters, Ludwig, before he had found his legendary Holy Moonlight sword deep within the catacombs below Yharnam. Yuu had been begging Guren to let him use one since he had first saw his mentor’s cleave a beast in two, but had never had his wishes fulfilled...until now, when Guren held the wrapped hilt out to him with an air of detached boredom, as if he was not holding all of Yuu’s aspirations in his hand, as if gripping the handle of a hunter’s tool was as interesting as holding a sandwich.

“Stop gawking at me- what fool would I be, to send you off to a hunt without a weapon? Granted, you won’t have this one for long, but you’d look plain fucking stupid if you showed up empty-handed.” Guren shook it slightly; Yuu grasped the hilt eagerly, and then hissed and immediately dropped it as a sharp, painful current of electricity ran through it. It created a truly fearful clatter as it fell, and he jumped at the horrible sound, bracing for a reprimand- but for once,none came. Guren merely sighed, and picked it up again, acting as if the shock didn’t bother him (and maybe it didn’t). “...And this is exactly why you won’t be keeping this weapon for long. This is Shinya’s old weapon; he reinforced it with his own blood, and set blood gems laden with the bolt powers of the creatures he killed into its hilt. Absolute kin melter...but you’ll not be fighting kin, and because it was tempered with his blood, it doesn’t recognize you or trust you just yet.” With an air of detached nonchalance, Guren flicked out a knife, and, in one fluid motion, gashed open Yuu’s palm. Yuu shrieked and leapt back, cursing, but then stopped and watched, transfixed, as Guren wiped the blood onto the hilt of the sword, letting the runes carved on its surface run red with blood. “Here now, take it again. It shouldn’t hurt you this time.” Guren tilted the hilt towards him, practically shoving it into his palm; Yuu uneasily wrapped his cut hand around it, bracing for more pain, but felt none. The only thing that he felt was a bone-deep tingle and buzz; the blade didn’t hurt him anymore. He placed a palm on its sheath, and ran his hand over its markings, revenant. “So all I had to do was bleed on it?” He paused, and frowned; all the blood ministers said that he had had special blood, but he didn’t think that it extended to hunter weapons, too. “Do I have to do this to every weapon, or…?”

"No. The weapon you’ll receive from the Workshop will be an empty vessel, not imbibed with blood like Shinya’s is. They’ll explain it more when you get there. I never fucking cared about how that shit worked, really, only that it did and I’m still alive to tell the tale.” Guren’s cryptic, dismissive reply pissed Yuu off, but he had no other choice but to grind his teeth together in annoyance and wait it out. He didn’t want to be forced back to the ward for more experiments, or to be kicked out on chapel-cleaning duty; he wanted to stay and fight, and that could only be done if he bit his tongue and kept quiet. Yuu was not a naturally quiet or obedient person, but he had learned after being dosed with enough mystery elixirs and pumped full of strange blood. One learned quickly in Yharnam- the Healing Church made sure it was so.

So instead, he hefted the blade, (grunting in effort as he did so- this thing was heavy!) and clipped the sheath to the holding belt running across his shoulder, wincing as it dragged him backwards. Untransformed, it was a bit more manageable- but that meant he had to hold out a longsword as he walked, and, cool as it was, the look on Guren’s face as he eagerly flashed it around meant that if he didn’t put it away, he would have it taken away- and he didn’t want that.

“Don’t worry about how heavy it is,” Guren said, slapping a pistol and a bullet case into Yuu’s hands. “You’ll get stronger once you’re part of the dream- or you’ll find a weapon better suited to your fighting style. This is just to help set you up.”

Yuu nodded absently, turning the pistol and case over in his hands. The pistol was standard-grade; Yuu had seen them carried around everywhere, by hunters and civilians alike (though only hunters could really use them to their advantage). No, what really fascinated him was the bullet case, for it was not the usual box of bullets, but one that held a row of five moulds, connected each to a sharp metal tube. It looked somewhat like a syringe...but what could it be used for, if there was nothing to be injected?

“What’s this, Guren?” Yuu turned the tube away from himself, rapping his finger against it. The soft chime of fingernails on metal rang through the room, and Guren straightened up from where he had been poking through his gear, muttering balefully about messes.

"Oh, that?” He squinted at it, then yawned and scratched his nose. “That’s for making blood bullets. Slam it into your thigh when you’re desperate, and you can congeal your blood into something hard enough to work as a bullet. It sucks ass to do, but it saves lives, so get used to the idea of it.”

"What the _fuck_? But how do you make it hard enough to shoot it?” Yuu looked at the case with a newfound horror and curiosity, listening to the way the quicksilver bullets rattled around inside, metal clanging against metal. “No human blood can do that! That’s insane!”

Guren sighed irritably. Yuu tensed, closing his mouth in a thin line- but Guren seemed to have the patience of a saint this night, because he didn’t cuff him over the head, or tell him to shut up, like usual. “No, no normal human blood can make bullets. But hunter blood isn’t fully human, whether you’re part of the dream or not.” He swung his holy sword onto his back and straightened up, running a hand over his belt. “Even church hunters get a dose of mixed blood that makes us stronger, our senses sharper, our blood thicker and more malleable. You’ve been shot full of various strains of blood, but none of it was the kind to make you a hunter. The church doctors were very careful about that.” He stopped patting his pockets, letting out a grunt of relief, and pulled out a rather ornate bronze pocketwatch, winding it up with a sigh. “You’ll be getting that blood today, albeit from a minister of the Workshop. Now shut up, and check you have everything- we can’t go to early, or we’ll miss them. Hunters of the dream are pretty particular about sunlight- they don’t like to be out until it starts dying down. Some superstition of theirs or something.”

Yuu made a grunt of assent, and flopped back on the bed, letting the weight of the Holy Blade pitch him backwards, as they waited for the time when the sun was waning towards its dying light.

They left for the Workshop as soon as the rays of the afternoon sun began to bathe the city of Yharnam in golden light, in that strange twixt time between afternoon and evening. Already, the moon was visible, a fat silver coin that ghosted the horizon; Yuu could see it flashing at him behind the buildings as they descended down into the main cathedral hall, winking at him like a great old eye. It was nearly impossible to watch the world through the windows while struggling not to trip over the slightly-too-long-hem of the hunter robes that Guren had lent to him, but somehow, he managed- through sheer perseverance, or the simple fact that the great Holy Blade strapped to his back provided enough weight to keep him from immediately pitching down the stairs face-first if he lost his balance. Normally, that would bother him somewhat- he hated being weak, and worked extensively to counter it, to the point where he would need to be sedated so that he could not hurt himself during a training session- but for once, he welcomed the strain. The blade was not made for a normal civilian, after all, but a hunter- and a hunter he was soon to be!

The doors to the main cathedral appeared as they rounded a particularly winding bend, and, without a glance, Guren pushed them open, letting out a soft exile of what Yuu believed to belief when all the noise it offered was a slight squeak. The dim murmur of sound that had been audible from behind the door swelled; they had walked into a sermon, the pre-hunt sermon to be exact, and now the waves of the familiar prayer rose over Yuu’s head and crashed against his mind with new meaning.

_" _R_ emain wary of the frailty of men. Their wills are weak, minds young. The foul beasts will dangle nectar and lure the meek into the depths  Were it not for fear, death would go unlamented...and so let it be that we shall seek the old blood. Let us pray, let us wish to partake in communion...Let us partake in communion and feast upon the old blood. For our thirst for blood satiates us, soothes our fears. Beware the fragility of men, and seek the old blood.”_

The church doctor that was reciting the prayers paused, and looked to them; even from a distance, Yuu felt caught in their cold, pale gaze, frozen in the same way that the elixirs given to him when he was too rowdy did. And then they smiled, and Yuu felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise, for there was something a little too inhuman in their smile, teeth a little too sharp and too big to be normal.

“And here we have two noble hunters of the church, off to prepare for tonight’s purge.” Their voice temored and warbled, unsteady without the familiarity of prayer, but the people in the pews hardly seemed to notice as they looked over to where Guren and Yuu stood in the shadows, eyes widening in both fear and awe as he drank in the sight of their black church attire. A few were weak and sickly, hooked up to IVs that steadily dripped the healing blood into their arms, and these were the people who looked at the hunters with the most reverence, most likely praising them quietly for their part in keeping them safe. Yuu glanced up at Guren, seeking his guidance for the situation, but found nothing but blank boredom on his caretaker’s face. “Let us pray for their safety, let us pray for the gods to look kindly down on our dear hunters, let us pray that they find their purpose in such a noble endeavor. Let us pray, and partake in communion, and let not your heart grow feeble with the lure of blood, lest your blood become the feast of these two fine people we see before us.”

The church doctor chuckled, in a voice that sounded more like the harsh bark of a hunting dog than the leader of a sermon. The people of Yharnam seemed not to notice the peculiarities plaguing their leader, however, and instead opted to bow and murmur their thanks and goodwill to the direction of the both of them, which Guren took as his cue to start moving again.

"Let us pray for the hunter’s safety,” he murmured as they left the cathedral, and Yuu was startled at the vehemence in his words. “Bullshit. They wish for us to die along with the rest of their plague, so that those who see the extent of the horrors are forever silenced. Bull. Fucking. Shit.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Guren?” Yuu turned to wave at the massive, spindly creature clinging to the top of the cathedral, then turned back to watch his mentor stride ahead, frowning as he struggled to keep up with a double longsword strapped to his back. The lesser Amygdala lazily turned its kidney-shaped head to watch their path, but otherwise made no move to contact them, and Yuu didn’t bother to pursue a conversation. He didn’t feel like being called mad today. “Beasts eat people. People don’t want to be eaten, so we kill the beasts so that nobody winds up dead. What’s so bullshit about that?”

Guren snorted. “For all your insight, you sure are a dumbass.” He stopped at a corner, flicked out a pocketwatch to squint at, then tucked it back into his coat with a sigh. Yuu scowled at the insult, opening his mouth to protest, but was cut off when Guren slapped a palm over it. “No, be quiet. I’d have thought that an experiment like you would have figured it out by now, but apparently not; you’re just as naive as the rest of the populace. Must be the blood we gave you.” He tilted his head up to the sky; for a second, Yuu’s heartbeat raced, thinking he could see the false god hanging above them, but his eyes failed to focus on anything. Guren was looking inwards, not outwards. “Maybe that’s a relief. I’ve seen hunters who’ve figure it out go mad faster, perhaps from the guilt that they harbour. Can’t hold their blood when they can’t keep their conscience.” He looked down at Yuu, and then frowned, as if he had slipped some boundary and said too much. “Point is, there’s some things going on behind the curtains that you don’t know, and, quite frankly, don’t want to know. Knowledge that I’m sure you’ll figure out once the hunt begins.” A sad edge crept into his voice as he spoke, staring at Yuu mournfully, as if he was not seeing an experiment he must care for, but someone he was going to lose. Much as Yuu craved the affection, he could not help but shiver at the attention; something about that look, that phrase, felt painfully ominous.

“I don’t get why you can’t just tell me now,” he grumbled, looking down at his boots to avoid Guren’s strange gaze. The glint of his pistol’s barrel caught his eye, and he traced the engraving on its handle with a finger light with cation. He had no wish to risk shooting a bullet through his foot, even though he knew, logically, that no such danger would happen as long as he stayed clear of the trigger. “ Learning on the go sounds like a great load of bullshit to me.”

The sound of hooves on cobblestones rang through the air. Guren snorted quietly, and raised one hand to salute the driver of the carriage trundling towards them, beckoning him over. “Well, you better get used to it. Learning on the go is the only way you’ll be guaranteed to understand anything.”

Yuu didn’t have time to reply. He only had enough time to open his mouth and ready his angry face before the horses rushed by him and the carriage wheels splashed him with muddy water, leaving him spluttering.

"Better have some good coin or vials if you needing to be goin’ anywhere quick, sirs.” grunted the driver, clearly bored- and then he took a look at them, at the uniforms that they wore, and the colour abruptly drained from his face. “M-my apologies, good hunters. Tell me what your destination is and I’ll get it to you quick, I swear it.”

“Take us to central Yharnam’s blood ministration clinic. We have church business there.” Guren grunted, swinging the doors open. He didn’t seem at all phazed by the driver’s fear, something that struck Yuu as quite strange- weren’t the church hunters the guardians of the populace? But no, Guren didn’t even ask him what was wrong, even when the driver visibly shivered as he passed, looking fit to jump right out of his skin.

"Right away, sir.” The whip cracked, and the carriage lurched into motion, creaking and swaying as it made its way over the cobblestone streets. Yuu huddled near the window, staring out at the cathedral as it faded slowly into the distance, soon swallowed up by the towering buildings and incense burners of Yharnam’s interior. The hustle and bustle of the city fascinated him; he hadn’t seen anything other than the interior of the research hall and the Grand Cathedral since he was eight, and that was at the apex of a blood-moon hunt, after his parents had tried to slaughter him for fear of him transforming into...something. He wasn’t afraid of that nightmare anymore, but it had stained his past memories of life in the city beyond recognition.

There was a tourist shop, selling carvings of Great Ones and wooden hunter tools for children to play with. There was the general store, sticks of incense and holy water displayed on the windows along with loaves of bread and bottles of Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. People hurried along the cobblestone streets and sat at the feet of crying angels, that peculiar Yharnam pride etched into their faces, suffering and luxury alike woven together in their extravagant clothes and wary stances as they bought incense to ward off the beasts and bickered over what was the best way to keep away the beastly plague.

And then they clattered over the Great Bridge, and Yuu’s eyes widened as beggars began to show, huddled in the corners with their faces wrapped away and their trembling arms held out for coins. This was the part of Yharnam that was sealed away when the Hunt came, away from the protection and benevolence of the Healing Church, and it showed. There were no incense burners to keep the beasts from the streets; what few red lanterns were around seemed to have been bought or welded to houses by hand, twined around bars that had been bolted over the windows. The streets grew narrower, more crowded with people; Yuu caught the gazes of many more foreigners, folks too wide-eyed, exhausted, and poor to ever afford a trip to Cathedral Ward. Blood ministers and lower doctors milled about on the fringes, calling to them, but they were haggered by exhaustion, and many cast nervous glances up to the distant skies, fearing the onset of the night. Homeless people took shelter under the arms of the angel statues and coffins that lined the streets, sharing meals and blood between them. No amygdala hung from the buildings, and the loss of them felt almost eerie, like there was something very, very wrong, though Yuu knew instinctively that the opposite was probably true.

There few children that he could see were always grasped tightly to their mother’s sides, as if they were afraid that the crowd or something else would swallow them up. No orphans roamed the streets. There were none left, and there wouldn’t be any more, until the next hunt came along and left them crying, open for the Church to take.

“We’re here, good hunters.” The sudden lurch of the carriage jolted Yuu out of his thoughts, and he looked up to the front of the carriage, trying not to let his eagerness show too clearly. Behind a fence, shrouded by the early evening sun, a clinic sat, gates open to the street. A person stood on the doorstep, smiling out at the patients that wandered in, and right above their heads hung a sign, one that Yuu was able to decipher after a little bit of careful squinting.

**_Hunters wanted. Enlist for details or for blood payment here._ **

“Thank you, sir.” Even in thanks, Guren sounded bored beyond belief. Yuu frowned at him, but before he could berate him, Guren reached into his coat, and said. “Your family name is Anderson, right?”

“Adderson, actually, good hunter.” The driver’s voice was inquisitive, despite his nerves- and then Yuu watched, bewildered, as his pupils dilated and he swallowed thickly, shaking with something other than fear. And then Guren held up a small glass vial to the light, and shook it, displaying the thick, vivacious liquid within, and he understood.

Ah. Special blood of the Healing Church- no doubt some potent mix derived from a blood saint, something that could cure instantly and with little side effects, something far out of the normal paycheck of a mere taxicab driver.

"Adderson,” Guren mused, watching the sloshing blood- and then, without warning, he flicked his wrist and sent the little vial flying. The driver gasped, and immediately lunged for it, cradling the thing to his chest with a stunned, hungry expression, as if he couldn’t quite believe his luck. “I believe I remember someone with your last name coming to one of the cathedrals asking for something to cure consumption in a little girl. Your daughter, perhaps?”

"Indeed. Indeed.” Adderson nodded, but didn’t look up from the vial in his hands. “Lil’ Addie Adderson. Didn’t choose the name, mind you, but the missus wanted her to have her grannie’s name, after her brother had to run her through for beasthood right before she was born. You know how women can be about their daughters, sir. She’d kill me if I said otherwise.”

"Quite right.” Guren did not at all sound like he knew what women could be like about their daughters. He was studying Adderson, mouth set in a firm line, a strange light in his eyes- an expression that Yuu only ever saw when he saw his watcher drag off a maddened patient to the surgery altar, or off to behind the garden walls, where only Guren ever returned. “I’ll be sure to remember you, Adderson. Thank you for the ride.”

And with that, they dismounted, Guren poking Yuu out with a finger. Adderson muttered something in reply, but Guren didn’t bother to say anything in return, and he only poked Yuu harder when he tried to crane his head around to look at him.

"Ow! Guren, what the hell?” Yuu rubbed at the spot between his ribs and winced- Guren knew exactly where he had to jab at to hurt, even with all the layers of heavy cloth between them. “What were you playing at with that guy? I saw the look on your face. You looked like you were about to kill him, or run away or something.”

"Probably because he was showing signs of beasthood.” Guren looked down at him, expression totally serious, and Yuu fell quiet. Guren looked...nervous, worried almost, as if he was genuinely afraid for Yuu’s safety. “You saw how his pupils blew up?” At Yuu’s nod, Guren sighed, and made a strange circling motion with his fingertip, tracing something onto nothingness. “Well, I doubt that you had the right angle to really see what was wrong with him, but he had collapsing pupils. That’s the first sign of beasthood. The second sign came with his reaction to the blood. Most people in Yharnam want to get their hands on some good-quality Church blood- we are a city of sick refugees, after all- but he clearly wanted it for his own. I doubt he even has a daughter, or, if he does, she’s either perfectly happy and healthy, or long dead.” And then he looked up at the waning sun, hand gripping Yuu’s shoulder almost posessively, and muttered, “...for the sake of her poor soul, I hope it’s the latter.”  

Yuu fell quiet. And he stayed quiet as one of the two people on the steps walked down and came towards them, smiling broadly, hands extended out in welcome.

"Greetings, good hunters of the church!” He was a blood minister, and his hat was fucking ridiculous. Yuu eyed it skeptically, trying not to look too obvious about it- there might have been bandages over the old man’s eyes, but he had been around the Choir and their ridiculous blindfold caps long enough to know that that didn’t mean he could see him out of some hidden slit in the cloth. “Here to assess the patients, I assume? Well, you’ll be happy to hear that you won’t need your blades today. We’ve got no hints of beasthood here- just people healing well, under the grace of the good blood.”

"Not here for that today, actually.” Guren seemed to relax slightly as he looked at the minister; Yuu couldn’t blame him. The old guy seemed pretty pleased with himself, genuinely happy for the wellbeing of his patients, something that Yuu wasn’t used to seeing from the church doctors around him. “We’re here to get a hunter registered. A hunter of the dream.”

The old minister practically brightened with curiosity, head swiveling to where Yuu was. Well, if Yuu had any doubts as to whether or not he could see under all those old things, he sure as fuck knew now. “Oho, we’re going to have a dreamer now, are we? Well, then come right this way. Ixander over here will help set you up at the appropriate time. I’ll go get the blood ready.”

"...Ixander?” Yuu asked, confused beyond belief- was the old man speaking in third person?- and then promptly jumped and let out a screech of fear as a hunter stepped out of the shadows of the doorway, seemingly out of pure nothingness.

"Hey, Ixander.” Guren said, a shit-eating grin on his face- _he_ apparently had known that the other hunter was there the entire time, and Yuu gawked at him, not sure whether to continue on being scared or to be angry at Guren for shaming him like that. Ixander nodded at Guren, his eyes crinkling above his mask, and then turned his attention on Yuu, who decided, after about a half-second of deliberation, that ‘scared’ was probably the better emotion to be feeling at the moment.

"New dreamer, eh. Didn’t think you’d want to give an esteemed church boy up to people like us.” Ixander’s voice was quiet, muffled slightly behind the mask, and Yuu tensed up as he gave him a once-over. He seemed friendly enough, but there was a sort of…presence to him that left Yuu on edge, a strange, intense aura that kept him wary. His attention burned, as if he was hyper-aware of his surroundings, but at the same time, he didn’t seem to be real. Yuu wasn’t sure if it was the way he had snuck up on them, the predatory way that he looked at them (like he was thinking of all the different ways to dismantle them), or the strange scent that clung to him (a smell that was indecipherable, something that he could only really describe as ‘moonlit’), but one thing made itself pretty fucking clear: Ixander wasn’t a hunter that Yuu was familiar with. Sure, the blood that the church hunters imbibed gave them a similarly intimidating aura, but there was something about this kind of hunter that he wasn’t sure he felt safe around. Something...feral.

"We’ve not got the room to keep said esteemed church boy around.” Guren’s voice was dry, as if he couldn’t believe he was calling Yuu that, and clapped a hand on his shoulder, nearly overbalancing him. Yuu barked out a curse, flailing his arms around to keep his balance, and Guren smirked, a nasty little smile that Yuu didn’t trust one bit. “As you can see, he’s still rough around the edges. No respect for his superiors, no filter on his mouth, nothing. We gave up on trying to tame him a long time ago.”

"Then he’ll fit right in.” Ixander’s smile was hidden behind his mask, but the ease in his posture and the wrinkles around his eyes gave away his amusement. “We’ve got a lot of rough-and-tumble folks about; a good deal of parents send off their kids to hunt for us as a way of whipping them into shape, and that’s not even counting the foreigners and vagrants that join as a way of paying off their debts. I’m sure he’ll be fine here.” He nodded at Yuu, the predatory curiosity now gone, and Yuu relaxed and gave him a little wave, glad that he was out of the hunter’s crosshairs. “Besides, our patron likes us to be annoying, starblasted little fools. The fierce, inquisitive hunters always last through the night. So never curb your curiosity, newblood. We’re happy to have you, no matter how coarse you are.”

Yuu muttered his thanks, hardly able to believe his good luck- (when was the last time someone had been happy to hear he was a brash little shit, after all? Fucking never.)- but Ixander had already turned away, heading deep into the clinic, leaving the two church hunters with no choice but to trail along.

The clinic, as expected, was fucking miserable. Yuu couldn’t spend much time looking at his surroundings, engrossed as he was in keeping Ixander in sight, but the few glances he caught showed him nothing but suffering. Medical tables lined both sides of the room, each tangled with IV cords, and nearly all of them were full, containing people who had come to Yharnam for a miracle. Yuu caught sights of foreigners with their faces covered in bloodied bandages, hiding hideous sores, war veterans whose torn limbs were riddled with gangrene and maggots, people who wheezed and coughed red on every exhale. All were in some strange trance, either muttering and reaching out to things that weren’t there, or some lying still on the beds with their unseeing eyes focused on the heavens, looking for all the world like they had passed on from this world.

It was a place of miracles and desperation alike, this clinic where the dying came to hold communion with the old gods. Yuu felt a shiver go through him, felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The air seemed charged, like the air before a thunderstorm, like the eyes of the gods were trained on this place, where people sought communion without even being aware of what they were invoking.

 _Human or no, the oozing blood is a medium of the highest grade, and the essence of the formless Great One, Oedon. Both Oedon, and his inadvertent worshippers, surreptitiously seek the precious blood._   

 _Oedon?_ Yuu thought, reaching out with his mind’s eye. He saw nothing but starlight, but that was okay- even if the gods didn’t respond, he was sure they were listening, for the Great Ones were sympathetic in nature, and he could feel the weight of thousands of eyes on his back, even when no one in the clinic so much as spared him a glance. _Is this your doing, your will? Will you finally talk to me, after all these years of me reaching out? Are you the one I feel watching me now?_

No one answered. Yuu didn’t particularly expect him to- he wasn’t invoking the proper rituals, after all- but he couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. Maybe the gods would answer him soon, once he entered the Dream...whatever the fuck that meant.

“Here we are,” murmured Ixander, stopping before a door carved with a peculiar rune, one that looked like an eye crossed through with a vertical slash. An air of faint hostility seemed to emanate from the carving, but Ixander barely seemed to notice it, tracing his finger along the lines before he raised a fist and knocked on the door, waiting patiently as someone came along to unlock it. “You came a bit early- we’re still waiting on some transfers in from Cainhurst and Hemwick, though I’ve received a note from one of the other hunters stationed there that they should be here soon. We can’t begin the transfers until sunset, so it’s not that big of an issue, but I figured I’d give you a bit of warning.” He opened the door, then glanced at the two out of the corner of his eye, gaze completely neutral, and Yuu felt a chill run down his spine under his silent judgement. “Heard the Church isn’t too fond of Cainhurst at the moment. I’ll have you know that we of the dream are completely neutral on the matter. If you want to fight, you’re going to have to wait until everyone’s gotten their blood. I don’t want any permanent fatalities here.”  

“Calm the fuck down. We aren’t part of the Executioners.” Guren brushed past him and set himself up against the wall, crossing his arms like an asshole. Yuu tried to do the same, hopping up onto a chair next to him, and then immediately regretted it when Guren promptly kicked it over and sent him sprawling. “I kill beasts, not people. The upper workings of the Church are none of my business.”

"Moon-rotten stars-blasted fucking asshole!” Yuu howled, as soon as he got his breath back into him- the greatsword on his back had knocked all the air out of him, and fuck, it _hurt_. “What the actual _fuck_ , Guren? That hurt, you bitch!”

"Watch your fucking language, Yuuichirou, we’re dignified fucking people,” Guren barked- and Yuu flushed, both angry and embarrassed, as he heard the soft gasps and snickers of other people in the room with him. A quick flip of his head gave him an upside-down view of the room, where several other ragtag groups huddled, the few not unconscious and strapped to blood ministration tables either glaring or laughing openly at him. A girl in the back with dyed purple hair was practically shaking with mirth, the bow tying her braids back trembling as she bowed over- but when he had scrambled up to give her a tongue-lashing, she had disappeared. Strange. “Now get your clumsy ass over here. Ixander needs to tell you about being a dreamer.”

"Oh, don’t worry Yuu,” Ixander said, winking at him as he trotted over to them, face burning in humiliation. “He’s just pulling your leg. Get yourself comfortable- we can’t really start until our foreign enlisters and the Cainhurst knight get here anyways, and we won’t be able to start the transfusions until sundown. The Great One who created the Dream would eat us alive if she caught even the faintest trace of sunlight on our skin, and no one here wants to cross the mother of the hunt.”

Well, that was ominous- and abruptly Yuu realized just how _scared_ he was for this. This was far from the research hall and the orphanage, where he’d be pampered and tended to after every experiment, where his suffering had taken humanity one step closer to reaching their next evolution. This...this was much, much more personal, much more _real._ He wouldn’t just be a tool used to learn about how the world worked, an instrument of enlightenment- he’d actively walk between the layers of reality that formed the world. He wouldn’t be one of the people trying to find a reason behind the beasthood that plagued their city, he’d be one of the people who hunted the beasts that hunted them, a direct killer of the disease that had taken his first family.

It was a terrifying prospect- but his fear would do nothing but weaken him in his wait. And so he swallowed hard, focused on the weight of the sword on his back, and breathed in deep, purging his mind of his thoughts and worries.

_I will live. I will hunt. I will become a dreamer, and I will bring honour to the Church. By my blade, I swear it. I will not let this night take me as it did my parents, as it did so many other people in this city of miracles and nightmares._

And it was with this thought in mind that he let himself grow still, and watched with the other future dreamers as the sun sank closer and closer to the horizon, and the fading light of the dying day stained the waxing moon red.   

* * *

The cold bite of Cainhurst’s tiles through his silken trousers as he knelt would have been enough to burn the skin off of any other man; and yet, to a Vileblood, it felt nothing more than a mere nip. Mikaela knew this was a fact and, intimately so- he had knelt on these tiles before, when he was nothing more than a mere orphan caught on the brink of death, and he had watched as his bare skin had blued and began to crack- and he had also watched as the process reversed, once the monsters that had dragged him in had been satisfied, once the foul, burning blood that had saved and damned him in one go had finished reshaping him.

Now, he was no longer that orphan, and he was no longer on the brink of death, or in need of blood healing. But he knelt anyways, despite how uncomfortably stiff his silken attire was, no matter how painfully the engraved hilt of his quicksilver pistol dug into his side, for that was generally what one did when coming face to face with your queen.

(And savior, and goddess, and mother, and all those things rolled into one. To drink her blood was to be a slave. To drink her blood was to be powerful, to be noble, a force of nature that had existed for centuries and would exist for centuries after, a predator that hunted those who preyed on beasts.)

(To drink her blood was to become an outcast, and to find your family, and to be reshaped into something different, something other. To drink her blood was to crave it again, and to crave the blood of others, that sweet godly nectar that birthed gods and turned men to demons.)

"Mikaela,” She purred, and he looked up at her through lashes dusted with snow, watched her without moving a muscle. The ephemeral queen of Cainhurst, his jailor and savior, noticed this small movement, his reluctant devotion, and smiled. The sharp edges of her teeth dug deep into her plush red lips, and his hand clenched hard on his knees, trying to quench the fear he felt when he remembered the day he had turned. “You have been most obedient, and one of my favorite knights. Yet you refuse to use the power of the noble that you are. Why is that so?” Her voice was free of the venom of accusation, but she did not ask out of curiosity. It was merely a formality, a method of settling what little dissent was to come without making him lose his status. Mika cared little for being a noble, regardless of his bloodline, or the potency of the blood that had changed him, but he was surrounded by a circle of curious eyes, all belonging to knights and nobles of the queen, people who he had no interest in upsetting. Few of them knew how to hold their tongue, and none would pass up on the opportunity to kill him under the pretense of defending their queen’s honour, even if all knew he was favored by her.

He knew what having the blood of the Vileblood queen meant, and he knew exactly what the people around him would try to do to get it.

And so he responded in the most peaceful way that a high-ranking Cainhurst noble possibly could: with a cold, bored “I wish to be of real use to you, Your Majesty, not to rot away here on a gilded pillar for the servants to admire. Your word is my law; give me a task, and I will do it for you, no matter the cost.”

Indignity and admiration struck the crowd at once; Mika could hear them murmuring of honour and duty, and, in the same breath, the impedance of one so young as he dismissing the work of the nobles. Still, he remained bowed, expression flinty and cold, and watched the queen only, waiting for his next order. She was the only one who really mattered in the room. Her words would be the only ones that he would follow.

He was her dog, after all.

Finally, Krul grew bored with the bickering, and sat up in her throne, clapping her hands together once. The room fell silent immediately, turning to her; Mika felt the weight of thousands of hidden eyes slide off his shoulders, and exhaled softly in relief.

"What a noble statement, Mikaela. You are a man of action and a skilled warrior; it would be a waste to have you stuck in a room all day discussing politics, no matter how smart you may be.” Krul settled back in her throne, resuming her comfortable lounging stance, and smiled proudly; Mika, to his disgust, felt his heart leap at her approval, and did not say a word. Not that it bothered his queen; she had been expecting something like that, anyways. She knew his moods like a parent knew a child, and he despised and loved her for it at once. “Therefore, I have decided to combine the two efforts; I’m sure you know Yharnam’s plague is getting worse, and to counteract it, the esteemed Hunter’s Workshop has invited all to join them in their special hunts. They are the only people in Yharnam willing to acknowledge our strength, our hand in making the hunters into a force to be reckoned with. And I’ve heard that the Church is aware of their offer, too.” Her lips twisted into a mocking grin, one that showed just a little too much teeth for comfort. The room rumbled with soft, scornful laughter; no Vileblood was beloved by the Church, and no Vileblood loved them. The vicars and twisted scholars that ruled the city resented them for their special blood, the blood that they, in their envy and lust for power, had declared forbidden. And they of Cainhurst in turn resented them for the sick experiments they laid upon the people they claimed to protect, their greed for knowledge strong enough to forget the very thing that severed humanity from the beasthood that plagued them: empathy. Mika hated the bloodthirsty nobles that renewed his life, but he hated the Healing Church more, for what they did to the helpless, the desperate...for what they had done to people like him, before the Vileblood knights had come. The blurry memories of that forsaken place dragged his mind into darker places, places he’d rather not remember, and it’s only when Krul’s pale, inhuman eyes lock unerringly on his that he finds the strength to rise out of them. “The blind bastards will send their representatives, but they will not be hunters, or even creatures holding the promise of hunters. They will be cannon fodder, to put in the direct line of fire on the night of the hunt to distract the beasts, while the real hunters clean up the church’s messes. But we Vilebloods know better.” Her mocking smile was a terrible thing. “Yes, to hunt beasts is below us, a chore for servants; but to be an ambassador- now, that is a different task. And how long have we gone in Yharnam without a voice?” She tipped her head down, letting her strawberry-blonde strands of hair drift from her shoulders. “A long, long time. Too long, if you ask me. The last time we had an ambassador for the Workshop, or indeed, anyone of Cainhurst, has not occurred since our Lady Maria cursed the name of the Healing Church and ascended the Astral Clocktower, where she took her own life. But that was long ago now, and the sins that she distanced herself from or the memories of our valor have started to fade in the minds of the Yharnamites. According to the church, we are cursed.” She chuckled, rapping her long fingernails on the gilded edge of her throne, and the hallway chuckled back, in obedience and genuine laughter alike, always eager to please the queen and spit on the name of the church. “Takes one to know one, I suppose. But unlike the Church dogs, we have at least learned our place, and can take our curse with grace.” Lazily, she lounged back, and crooked a finger forward to something behind Mikaela- or someone. Two someones, in fact; Mika did not move from his position, or even take his eyes from his queen, but there was nothing quite as distinctive as the subtle click of Cainhurst armour, or the soft thuds against the plush carpet that the kneepads made as two knights dropped to either side of him to bow. He hadn’t looked at them, or heard them speak, but he already felt resignation beginning to creep over his heart- there were only two knights in Cainhurst that had been in training when he grew old enough to wield a sword, and they were the only two that had bothered to watch him when he decided to trade the more traditional blood-based Reiterpallasch and Chikage for the Rakuyo, a double-ended sword with a detachable blade that required high skill and lots of range to properly execute its spinning and thrusting attacks. He didn’t really have any other options, other than….”Lacus Welt and René Simm. You are honourable knights of Cainhurst, and have trained alongside Mikaela in the arts of our ways. The two of you are to accompany him to Yharnam as guards; I do not expect you to join the Dream, no, but I do not want him to go alone, especially when the animosity against us is already so high. I have no doubt that the Church will attempt something monstrous, and it is only safe to have multiple people on the scene, in the case where one or more of you are taken off-guard.” Krul’s eyes glinted, and she smiled in a way that bared her teeth, showing off the long, sharp eyeteeth that were so distinctive of the Vilebloods. It was just as much of a threat display as it was a show of amusement, and Mika felt a shiver run down his spine, trepidation and anticipation trembling through him. He had to fight against the urge to snarl back. “Not that I have any doubts that you will thoroughly humiliate the fools, and in the heart of their own empire, no doubt! It will only reveal their cruel nature if they attacked you and failed to destroy the evidence.”

"We are honoured, my queen.” Only René sounded professional; Mika could hear the glee suffusing Lacus’s voice, barely muffled by his reverence for Krul. Mika tried not to sigh- he was not looking forward to holding him back. Lacus was a violent, energetic man, always eager to start or participate in a fight, and his thirst for hunter blood was unchecked. René was one of the few people who he ever listened to- that is, when he could be bothered to keep him regulated. If the church hunters that they would encounter were raring to start a war, then it would be practically impossible to keep Lacus from rising to their bait. “We solemnly swear that we will protect Lord Mikaela with our life.”

“Excellent.” Krul nodded, satisfied with their proclamations, and waved her hand at them dismissively. “Now rise. The sun sets soon on Yharnam- we won’t want Mika to be late.”

"Of course, your Majesty.” Lacus and René rose with words of reverence on their lips, but Mika said nothing. His eyes were locked onto Krul, trying to search for something that would give him his true mission, something that would give him some preperation for the nightmare he was about to be immersed into.

And his queen answered.

 _The full moon is rising soon_ . Krul’s whispers would have gone unnoticed by others, but Mika had learned how to read her, had learned the secret language that she used to communicate, a tongue long-lost to time. He had spent too many years in her shadow to stay ignorant, and the language of Pthumeru Ihyll now rolled off his tongue with ease. _And when the full moon comes, the real Hunt begins. The first time the full moon rose over Yharnam, after they plundered the toumbs of our ancestors, the beast plague was born again. The second time, Old Yharnam burned, Maria was lost to the Nightmare, and the Great Ones mourned. Be prepared, Mikaela. A storm is coming, and the gods themselves will weep for what they have lost. I can feel it coming._

_The blood moon will rise again, and a new god will be born from death._

Not one Vileblood remained ignorant of the dangers of the moon. Not one Vileblood remained ignorant of what the church had done, what the nightmare their ancestors had created when they had sacrificed a newborn to beckon the moon, when the nightmare had swallowed Yharnam and the Hunt refused to die.

But only Mika had been experimented on by the Church. Only he knew truly what the Church was willing to sacrifice in exchange for power, and only he was willing to give everything he had to watch them fall.

Mika swallowed, nodded, and took his leave. He didn’t look back. He had no wish to say a final goodbye, to remember the great grand hall of Cainhurst. It would do him no good when the Great Ones descended, and he had never really been fond of saying goodbye.

He knew, somehow, somewhere deep within him, that he wouldn’t be coming back.

 _And so, the hunt begins again._.. **  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beasts are a curse, and the curse is a shackle.  
> Only ye are the true blades of the Church.
> 
> get ready for a shitton of blood magic and mind fuckery yo


End file.
